Character Concepts: Kara, Kenku Rogue/Bard

A friend asked about making a good multiclassed rogue/bard, or bard/rogue, whichever works. I think that they can both work extremely well since both classes use Charisma in some capacity. Rogues can get a lot of mileage out of it with the Artful Dodger class feature, and bards are entirely dependent on it, so there's a lot of room for synergy.

I was considering what race to use, and wanted to default to the half-elf since they are great iconic rogues and bards, not to mention their multiclassing affinity. That seemed waaaaaaaaaay too easy and I dont really care for half-elves, so I quickly discarded it in favor of a more...unique race: the kenku.

Kenku made their debut in Monster Manual 2, and was something I was going to kick around as a Charisma-based paladin of the Raven Queen in an "oriental setting" part of my Points of Light campaign, where I called the Raven Queen something else entirely. However, thats neither here nor there, so for now I'll just stick to the plan.

I decided to start out with the rogue as a good foundation, since my friend wanted to have the built excel at melee stuff. This works out well since the bard has plenty of brutal melee spells at its disposal, but being as we only get one feat at level 1 to play with, we wont be seeing any of that at the start.

It was a simple matter of immediately slapping 16's in both Dex and Cha. I need Cha anyway for Artful Dodger, and once I actually get around to learning bard spells it'll be doubly useful. I put some pips into Strength, since I wanted to reflect a rough upbringing on the mean ol' streets as viewed through the eyes of China Mieville. I almost never seem to put Con at 8, so I did just for that reason, chalking it up to chronic malnourishment while growing up.

ITEMSLeather Armor, Adventurer's Kit, Dagger, Short sword, Shuriken====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&DI Character Builder ======

I prefer to advance a character in a more organic fashion (ie, actual play), but I advanced Kara up to level 10 to see how well she plays with groups. Basically it ended up with me taking a bard attack and utility, which was easy since bards are leaders and thats their thing: work with the group.

Speaking of bards, lets see how she looks as a bard-multiclassed-rogue.

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&DI Character Builder ======Karasu, level 1Kenku, BardBardic Virtue: Virtue of Cunning

I think that this build better compliments the flock mentality that kenku emphasize. The problem I ran into is that none of the bard virtues rely on Dexterity, where the rogue/bard combination readily uses both high ability scores. In this case, the Int of 13 ensures that Virtue of Cunning gets something, but not much. On the chance that most melee powers synch up to Virtue of Valor, its a simple manner of swapping Int with Con. In the end, its a minor benefit at best, at least until paragon tier.Now, you could drop Dex a bit and take the bard multiclass feat that causes all multiclass powers to rely on Charisma. This basically sidesteps most of the mess and lets you get away with having a Dex of 16 and an Int of 14-15. Your damage is slightly lower (by one whole point, yawn), but I think its a worthy tradeoff.

Both builds work out very well and are thematic in their own way, and this actually makes me want to run an all kenku urban campaign...